Directed By Nikita Mikhalkov
Cast: Nikita Mikhalkov, Oleg Menchikov, Ingeborga Dapkounaite, Nadia Mikhalkov
year: 1995
When Nikita Mikhalkov walked off the stage at the Oscars bearing his young daughter Nadia on his shoulders, the moment was so obviously satisfying that it was tempting to confuse his happiness with the Academy's wisdom. Yet "Burnt by the Sun" was not the best of the nominated foreign films ("Before the Rain" deserved to win), and is not even very original.
It won, dare I say, because it benefitted from the Academy's flawed rules.
As the only one of the nominees not in theatrical release, it was seen only by those who came to its Academy preview screenings. They, by definition, then became the only voters who had seen all five films and were eligible to vote. This strategy - of keeping a nominee out of theaters in hopes that its private screening audiences will sway the outcome - has worked before, and it worked again this time.
A publicist merely has to be sure to invite everyone friendly to the film, while leaving it up to others to find their own way.
Mikhalkov is a good director (he made the 1987 "Dark Eyes," with Marcello Mastroianni as a man mourning his own romantic loss), and "Burnt by the Sun" is not without interest, but there is little original in it, and its visual style owes much to the pastoral style of many pre-1991 Eastern bloc epics in which lazy summer afternoons and lush scenery conceal parables that are somehow visible to everyone except the government bureaucrats who approve the film.
The movie, set in the final days of peace before World War II, takes place at the idyllic country home of Kotov (Mikhalkov), who lives there with his pretty young wife Maroussia (Ingeborga Dapkounaite) and their daughter, Nadia (Nadia Mikhalkov). All is sunshine and joy, although there are certain omens of impending trouble, for example the mysterious fireballs that streak across the sky like heavenly signs in a play by Shakespeare.
Then a stranger arrives. Wearing a gas mask as a disguise, he bursts into the house, amuses everyone with his clowning, and then plays the piano. Finally he removes his mask, and is revealed as Mitia, a handsome young man who was once, we eventually learn, Maroussia's lover.
Why has he come to visit? More to the point, why is he accompanied by two porkchop-faced thugs in a big black car? As he joins other guests and jolly servants in the celebration of the pleasant country day, we learn slowly - very slowly - that he is a government agent, come perhaps to punish Kotov for having frustrated army movements that threatened a neighbor's wheat fields.
The film looks in many respects like "Sunday's Children," the 1994 film written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by his son, Daniel, in which, once again, we see a large summer house filled with colorful servants, irascible old-timers, a marriage in crisis and family secrets. While Bergman's film unfolds like an emotional mystery tale however, Mikhalkov's dawdles with leisurely pastoral details, and a great deal of unmotivated jollity. The ending, when it comes, has been well and long foreseen.
The movie does have an interesting moral and political ambiguity. When Mitia left Maroussia, she waited a year for him, and then attempted suicide. Now she is married, with a daughter and a home, but does she still yearn for him? Why did he leave? Her husband flaunts his friendship with Stalin with photographs all over the house, but is Mitia in fact now a closer friend? Has Kotov been living in a fool's paradise, or can he call Stalin and get rid of Mitia and the thugs? The movie can be read as a parable about the approaching change in Soviet direction as the war begins, or about the treachery of friendship, or about the dangers of complacency. Unfortunately, unless it can also be read as a story, it has little interest for viewers, who cannot be expected to care about characters merely because of what they symbolize.
Mikhalkov spices his story with hints and omens - not just the fireballs, but faraway thunder, and a hot-air balloon bearing a vast portrait of Stalin that glares down at the landscape - but the movie lags and drags, bogged down in forced behavior, like a party guest who is having a bad time but keeps on smiling. Even in the area of political parable, where it is strongest, "Burnt by the Sun" doesn't stand up to comparison with "Before the Rain." Yes, it won the Oscar, but it will, I'm afraid, join a long list of Oscar winners few people will remember, or hope to see twice.
CINCINNATUS, the hero of the Roman Republic, left his farm to lead an army and defeat the enemies of the state. Then, spurning dictatorial power, he returned to his plow. It's a powerful archetype - powerful enough that 2,000 years later he got an American city named after him.
Now Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov gives us a Soviet-era version of the Cincinnatus story, transformed by the force of Stalinism into bitter, ironic tragedy. The film, "Burnt by the Sun," won the best foreign film Oscar this year and the grand prize at Cannes last year.
Serguei Kotov (Mikhalkov) is a hero of the Bolshevik revolution - a retired general who's trying to live out his existence peacefully in the 1930s Russian countryside with his young wife, Maroussia (Ingeborga Dapkounaite), and 5-year-old daughter, Nadia (Nadia Mikhalkov).
At the start of "Burnt by the Sun," we watch this big man ride off bareback to save the local peasants' crops from the treads of army tanks on maneuvers. "It's the people's wheat!" he roars. One look at Kotov's celebrated profile and the junior commander orders an about face.
Kotov, however, is about to learn that revolutions cut down their own - and that the tallest, proudest stalks are the ones that go first.
"Burnt by the Sun" is Mikhalkov's memorial to the Russian leaders who were convicted in "show trials" or who simply disappeared in the 1930s, as Stalin disposed of anyone, including most of the heroes of 1917, who might challenge his power. The purges left the Soviet Union in bad shape when it came time to find leaders for the defense against Hitler's invasion.
The movie is also a Chekhovian evocation of an idyllic backcountry life in Russia that had barely survived into the '30s and that would disappear entirely in the wake of the oncoming war. Mikhalkov, whose 1976 "Unfinished Piece for Player Piano" is one of the great Chekhov films, knows just how to combine lyrical touches and ironic distance in recording the lives of the privileged yet doomed.
Mikhalkov himself plays Kotov as a leonine Russian soldier who no longer has a stomach for politics and who is trying to duck the demands of public life to enjoy a well-earned retirement. But his family's peace is interrupted when the long-lost Mitia (Oleg Menchikov), who had been Maroussia's lover once, returns to the ancestral estate with his own agenda.
What ensues is a combination love triangle and political drama, all set by Mikhalkov against a semi-absurdist backdrop: giant Stalin balloons floating across empty forests, civil-defense gas masks distributed by anxious brigades of "Pioneers," mythical fireballs zooming around the landscape, and a stray truck driver who asks directions at a tragically unlucky moment.
The greatest tragedy here is Kotov's delusion that his status as a hero of the fatherland can protect him from Stalin's hand. Even after he's been hustled off in an unmarked car from his home - and he goes with careful bravado, pretending all's well to soothe his family - he doesn't see what's happening to him. The moment at which he's forced to do so, via the casual violence of his abductors, ruptures the movie's gentility like a thunderclap.
Set against the backdrop of the Russian countryside under Stalin's rule, this Oscar-winner for best foreign film is a brilliant, Chekhovian meditation on trust, love, and the intrusive horrors that period of time brought to otherwise normal families. It's 1936 and retired military hero Serguei Kotov (director Mikhalkov) is enjoying the warm, restless summer with his extended family at their dacha just outside Moscow. Into this postcard-perfect picture of lazy familial bliss steps an outsider: Mitia (Menchikov), a long-lost family friend and, unbeknownst to Kotov, the former lover of his young wife Maroussia (Dapkounaite), who appears in disguise at first, taunting the household with rude and lusty exhortations about their various vices. Once the charade is revealed, though, Mitia is welcomed with open arms, although the purpose for his sudden and entirely unexpected return remains unknown. As Kotov's relationship with his wife begins to show some strain, he stumbles across the truth of Maroussia's former relationship with Mitia, which naturally sets off a series of emotional fireworks between all three. Meanwhile, the visitor has become increasingly and unpleasantly close to Kotov's six-year-old daughter. Family members -- not the least of whom is Kotov himself -- are beginning to suspect that there is more to Mitia than they suspect. Mikhalov's film moves in and out of so many different emotional levels so fluidly, that when the worst finally comes, you barely notice it, as though it had been there all along. Mikhalkov's portrait of a Russian family circa the mid-Thirties is obviously heartfelt and touching in its pleasant ordinariness. Everyday actions take on a shimmering golden glow here; family baths, dinners, and verbal sparring flow so naturally through this film that it's almost as if someone had taken a home movie of your old-country grandparents. Add to this heady brew Mikhalkov's surreal (and occasionally mystifying) use of film symbolism, and you have one of the most interesting, and engrossing, Russian films in years, one that runs the gamut from love to hate to fear and back again, all of it presided over by the omniscient shadow of Joseph Stalin.
BURNT BY THE SUN is a Russian film and was the winner of the 1995 Academy Award for best foreign film. It is a comedy set in the 1930s during the Stalin era in Russia.
Colonel Serguei Petrovitch Kotov (Nikita Mikhalkov) is an old hero of the revolution now retired to a small village. He is married to a lovely young wife, Maroussia Kotov (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), and together they have a beautiful young daughter, Nadia Kotov (Nadia Mikhalkov). Into their life comes Maroussia's old boyfriend, Dimitri/Mitya (Oleg Menchikov). The plot from there made little sense so I will not attempt to outline the story more.
If you like Russian style humor or if you Monty Python style British humor, you will probably go gaga over this show. I was at a fairly full movie house where most of the audience set in stone silence as if they didn't get it. A few people however were in non-stop laughter mode. For this show you either love or you hate it. There is no in-between. As you can guess by the rating, I am in the I-don't-get-it category.
Let me note the two highlights of the show. First, the cinematographer (Vilen Kaluta) manages to make an oppressive dictatorship have a radiant feel that makes you think old Joe Stalin's country would have been a pretty peaceful place to live. Watch the Daddy and the young girl drift down the lake on their boat. Picture perfect. Notice how the camera hugs them in the close ups and how the shots are carefully done with a twilight glow.
The second highlight of the movie was in the attractive and visually interesting actors cast to play the lead father, mother, and young girl. The girl was especially charming.
Now for the rest of the review. I found the script by Roustam Ibraguimbekov and Nikita Mikhalkov to be a mess. Certainly there were the odd, good one liners. My favorites was the one about a woman who was so into medicine that when the doctor prescribed iron, she boiled nails and drank the water.
Mainly though the scriptwriters and the director (Nikita Mikhalkov) relied on broad humor and sight gags of the Monty Python style. We had a redhead whose claim to humor was that she wore round, large framed glasses always on the tip of her nose. We also had many fat people who were supposed to be funny solely because of their girth. In one scene, a fat woman blocks Mitya's view and that in and of itself is supposedly humorous. We have a Summer Santa figure in a long ugly beard, long hair, and bad clothes, that was supposed to make us laugh. Many of the characters had exaggerated gestures in failed attempts at humor. I generally don't like slapstick comedy, and this movie was no exception.
Nikita Mikhalkov, who co-wrote, co-produced, directed and starred in "Burnt By the Sun," has created a most impressive achievement with this story of love, loyalty and deception, taking the film in surprising directions and accomplishing a highly entertaining character study while offering a heartfelt political message.
And his talent has obviously been inherited by his young daughter Nadia, who costars here and handily steals every scene she's in. (If you saw the Oscar broadcast last March you may recall that when Mikhalkov accepted his award at the podium, he hoisted up his daughter to let her hold the statuette aloft.)
In the first third, the film resembles Ingmar Bergman's light comedy "Smiles of a Summer Night" (remade as the musical "A Little Night Music" and reworked as Woody Allen's "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy"), as a close-knit family comes together with friends for a summer Sunday in 1936. (Though, perhaps Chekov would be a more appropriate comparison, particularly "Uncle Vanya.")
Mikhalkov is Serguei Kotov, a famous military hero of the Bolshevik revolution. He is married to much-younger Maroussia (Inge-borga Dapkounaite), to whom he is devoted, and dotes on his energetic 6-year-old daughter Nadia (Nadia Mikhalkov).
We are immediately introduced to Kotov's reputation and the level of his power as he saves his neighbors' wheat crop by re-directing military maneuvers, as tanks threaten to trample the fields. "My only day off," he grumbles, though he clearly enjoys being able to show off.
After he returns to their country home, everyone is having a nice, relaxing time when suddenly Mitia (Oleg Menchikov) shows up, a charming young man who is revealed to have been Maroussia's former lover. For this middle third, Mitia is a lighthearted scoundrel, who seems bent on winning Maroussia back. But he gradually becomes a more mysterious and ominous figure, whose motives for being there are not completely clear (although they are hinted at in the film's prologue).
Then, in the final third, the film goes off in yet another direction, as motivations are revealed and the story veers toward tragedy.
A deeply moving mix of comedy and drama, "Burnt By the Sun" is replete with rich characters, all very well performed (though Mikhalkov and his daughter are especially ingratiating), and Mikhalkov's eye for lyrical visual imagery is delightful. His screenplay also takes some freewheeling satirical pokes at Russian history and society before it becomes more serious and comments on the dead-ly purges of Stalin's regime in the '30s.
The results make for an enormously satisfying film.
`Burnt by the Sun' is dreamy, luscious and lyrical, a light-drenched day in the country; it's also a bone-rattling drama of betrayal and mayhem. The revolutionary sun blazes on the Soviet Union of revolutionary son Josef Stalin, and in Nikita Mikhalkov's view, even the zealots are blistered.
American Cold Warriors will find it easy to admire this engrossing and ultimately horrifying condemnation of the Stalinist regime, but for Russians, the director's answer to complex historical questions may seen oversimplified.
Was Stalin's blood-soaked tyranny an anomaly or the natural result of Lenin's violent revolution? Were the Red heroes of the Revolution free of blame for the millions who died in the purges that came later?
Mikhalkov, who co-wrote the screenplay, directed and starred in this Oscar-winning movie, plays the Bolshevik revolutionary hero Kotov.
He's respected by his countrymen for his role in the Revolution, and beloved by his beautiful young wife, Maroussia (Ingeborga Dapkouaite), their adorable 6-year-old daughter, Nadia (played by Mikhalkov's own 6-year-old daughter, Nadia), and the aristocratic Chekhovian family that frolics around the country estate -- a collection of aunts, uncles and cousins constantly gathering around the piano or the dining table for merriment or meals.
The story is told on a single day, which begins with the arrival of Dimitri (Oleg Menchikov), a former poet and musician who was Maroussia's lover before her marriage. Dimitri, welcomed as a favorite, captivates the household with teasing, music and gaiety.
But the music is too loud, the dancing too wild, and the viewer senses that somehow the visitor's presence is going to spoil the idyllic picture. When Nadia demands a story and Dimitri tells a wrenching parable about a young man called away from his lover to serve his country, the tale darkens, and the ``blame'' seems to fall on Kotov, agent of the Revolution.
As the day progresses, and the sun moves overhead, searing the landscape, the focus of the story shifts from the personal to the political, and the heroes and villains reverse themselves. Hazy clues waft through the summer air, but it takes most of the movie before the denouement becomes clear.
In pointing such an unwavering finger of blame at Stalin and his minions, the director exonerates the Bolsheviks from any blame for the bloodshed that occurred after the Revolution. This is a somewhat fine point that may not matter to most American viewers -- to whom the secret police, Josef Stalin and the Communist regime are virtually synonymous -- but is highly debatable among politically minded (virtually all) Russians.
'Burnt by the Sun' is much more, however, than political tract. Oscar aficionados who watched Mikhalkov accept his award for best foreign film with his little girl in tow were entranced by the image of the bear-like papa beaming at his shiny-faced daughter. And Kotov's enchantment with his Nadia is at the heart of this movie.
The image of the little girl and her father declaring their mutual love as they glide down the river on a lazy afternoon is an embodiment of pure familial affection, of the good that can be suffocated by the crush of political ideology.
It's the strongest image in the movie, the scene most viewers will remember the longest, and that's just the way Mikhalkov must have planned it. Family first and family last, love before violence.
A method for separating the good foreign-language films from the bad: The good ones make you forget you are reading subtitles.
By this standard alone, the Russian movie "Burnt by the Sun" is a superior import. Ten minutes into the film, its tale of love and politics in the 1930s Soviet Union is so engrossing that the viewer who speaks about seven words of Russian feels suddenly fluent.
Subtitles? What subtitles? This is a movie whose plot is largely mysterious for most of the first hour, during which almost none of the dots are connected, and yet it never frustrates or drags. Though there are some flaws and gaps in the version now showing in this country�which is a half-hour shorter than the original�the film is well worth a detour from standard multiplex fare. Venturing beneath the familiar horrific history of the Stalinist period, it explores the way individual lives were actually lived under that era's totalitarianism, and how private lives intersected with public terror.
The story begins with an omen, a black car passing through Red Square early one morning in 1936. A young man (Oleg Menchikov) arrives at his apartment, converses petulantly with his French-speaking valet and displays suicidal leanings.
Next we are in the sunny Tolstoyan countryside, where the summer silence is rudely broken by the arrival of Soviet tanks and airplanes. Turns out they are on a Stalinist mission to destroy the villagers' wheat. Panic ensues until a certain local resident named Col. Kotov, a burly hero of the Revolution and friend of Stalin himself, employs his considerable prestige and charisma to halt the attack. (Kotov is played by Nikita Mikhalkov, who also wrote and directed the film.) After the contretemps, he joins his eccentric family�including a daft maid, various fey relatives, and his much younger wife and angelic daughter (the latter played by Mikhalkov's own daughter, Nadia)�in a dreamy day at the dacha. Here there are lace curtains, happy old songs played on the piano, plans for a big meal and a swim in the river, and innumerable intimations of love and contentment.
It all feels like a pre-Bolshevik idyll among the high bourgeoisie, except for intermittent appearances by the local party faithful as they engage in marches, a farcical gas-attack drill, and the building of a strange balloon in honor of Comrade Stalin.
In the midst of all this, our nervous young Muscovite reappears. We learn that his name is Dimitri, and that 10 years before, he and the colonel's wife were lovers. He has returned from political exile�he fought against the Red Army�on a mission to reclaim the love he believes the Revolution denied him.
Mikhalkov mixes quiet humor with horror in an especially Russian way. Watching a scene in which Dimitri wears a gas mask while playing French dance hall music on the piano, one imagines that if Chekhov had lived into the 1930s he might have written scenes like this one.
The director and his daughter possess first-rate acting genes, it's clear, and Menchikov is flawless. The film has a supernatural element�a fiery ball that moves around the landscape�that is handled a bit ineptly, and probably should have been cut. Ditto for the final scene.
The film recently won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but do not confuse it with that other Oscar magnet, "Forrest Gump." The American film adheres to the Hollywood party line, assuring us that existence is as simple as milk and all our endings are happy. Mikhalkov, who also gave us "Dark Eyes," is more interested in the unutterable complexity that gives life its texture and its ache.
"BURNT BY the Sun," which won the Oscar for the best foreign-language film, is old-fashioned, auteurist filmmaking, the kind that grows from a filmmaker's unrestrained vision rather than a Hollywood studio marketing survey. As such, "Burnt by the Sun," directed by Russia's Nikita Mikhalkov, has all the attendant pluses and minuses of these cinematic dinosaurs�but mostly pluses.
The story of a family and a people�it's about the scorching all too many suffered from the rising sun of socialism�the movie's a constant, rich tapestry of Chekhovian and Bergman-esque family life. It's also suffused with Mikhalkov's customary sense of irony and political symbolism.
With a running time of 134 minutes, and with no flagging of details or energy, "Sun" makes great demands on that rapidly diminishing commodity�the American attention span. But with sustained concentration, the experience is ultimately rewarding.
Colonel Kotov (played by Mikhalkov) is a legendary figure in the 1917 revolution. In 1936, as Stalin's purges are gathering momentum, the mustachioed officer has retired to the country with his attractive, much younger wife Marussia (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) and precocious 6-year-old daughter Nadia (Nadia Mikhalkov�the director's own daughter whom he slung famously over his shoulder at the Academy Awards).
Kotov's serene life is destroyed when Mitia (Oleg Menshikov), an old flame of Marussia's, makes an unexpected visit�this after a considerable absence. Marussia, who married Kotov after giving up hope of Mitia's return, is confused about her feelings toward him.
Mitia is a charmer, who captivates Kotov's daughter and clearly still has sway over Marussia's feelings. Little by little, the young man's real agenda becomes apparent and Kotov, a salt of the earth who believes in his country and Stalin, learns that his glorious achievements of the past mean little in the new political climate.
Mikhalkov, who also made "Dark Eyes," is occasionally guilty of overwrought symbolism. Socialist builders, for instance, are erecting a barrage balloon carrying a banner of Stalin, which is obviously timed to rise before our eyes in all its empty puffery right at the end. "Sun" could also have stood half an hour of editing. But it's masterfully directed throughout, from the lyrical sunniness of a family picnic early in the story to the final, gripping sequences.
The most touching element of all is the relationship between fictional (and real-life) father and daughter. The Mikhalkovs work together like Astaire and Rogers. He's a life-affirming Zorba the walrus, she's a delicate angel perched on his back. In her face, the movie memorably invests its doomed innocence and faith.
Nikita Mikhalkov walked off the stage at the Academy Awards ceremony last month carrying his Oscar for best foreign-language film in one hand and the movie's star, his 8-year-old daughter, Nadia, in the other. He knows the value of being a sentimentalist and a showman. He is also a director of the first rank, whose films go far deeper than their seductive visual beauty. So it makes sense that his exquisite, lyrical and tough-minded "Burnt by the Sun" combines surface charm with trenchant realism. Mr. Mikhalkov himself plays a retired army officer and hero of the Russian Revolution, who on one gloriously sunny summer day in 1936 discovers the reach and horror of Stalin's rule.
With its Chekhovian sense of a brutal future encroaching on an elegant, dying world, "Burnt by the Sun" matches the enduring power of Mr. Mikhalkov's best works, "A Slave of Love" (1976) and "Dark Eyes" (a 1987 film starring Marcello Mastroianni), and is very much of a piece with them.
"A Slave of Love" is set in 1917, when a film crew in the countryside futilely tries to outrun the revolution. Similarly, "Burnt by the Sun" is poised at a precise and crucial historical moment. Mr. Mikhalkov's fictional character, Kotov, has retired to the country with his young wife, Marussia (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), and their lively 6-year-old daughter, Nadia (Nadia Mikhalkov). When army tanks begin to roll over his neighbors' wheat fields, Kotov uses his influence and status as a hero to turn the tanks back. But because it is 1936, the beginning of Stalin's great terror, Kotov has unwittingly made the kind of gesture for which he will pay. In "A Slave of Love" no one is untouched by the revolution; in "Burnt by the Sun" no one escapes Stalinism.
With his bushy mustache and thinning hair, Kotov is not a glamorous figure. Mitia (Oleg Menshikov) is. Young and handsome, with dark, slicked-back hair, he is a family friend and former lover of Marussia. He arrives to visit unexpectedly and charms the extended family, especially little Nadia. Kotov is the only one to suspect that Mitia has a political mission. The film layers both men's motives, mixing jealousy over Marussia with political loyalties to suggest a tangle of private feelings and historical forces.
Mr. Mikhalkov turns this idea into emotional drama and subtly plays with historical perspective as well. The romantic aura evokes the traditional past of Chekhov. In the country house, sheer white curtains frame views of lavish woods, and loyal family servants provide comic relief. Mr. Mikhalkov uses lyricism well, recognizing its power to seduce (his audience as well as the film's characters) and its ability to delude and disguise. The film's leisurely pace and lush photography recreate the false security of Kotov's life.
But when Mitia plays the piano and the family dances the cancan before lunch, his playing gradually turns from zany to manic. It is just one of the omens, like the fiery yellow sun that occasionally flashes across the sky, hinting at a world about to explode. In the film's "present" time of 1936, this idyllic setting exists near a hot-air balloon factory, where a banner reads: "Glory to the builders of Stalin's balloons." And the audience's perspective from the 1990's provides the film with much of its ominous tone.
Mr. Mikhalkov plays Kotov as a man whose confidence in himself and his country are at first unshakable. He adores Nadia and in a tender scene they take a boat ride together. He wants a better future for her, he explains, and tells her she must always "respect your Soviet fatherland." He clearly sees a parallel between his own loving relationship with Nadia and what he considers Stalin's benign paternalism. Photographs of Kotov with Stalin are prominent in the house. When Kotov realizes why Mitia has come, he reacts calmly, savoring a last afternoon of freedom. He is certain that a phone call to his friend Stalin will save him in the morning.
As Nadia, the young Miss Mikhalkov is priceless and natural, with blond braids and a sweet enthusiasm. Nadia longs to be part of the children's military regiment, and through her the film reveals how ruthlessly children are used.
Mitia is also more complicated than his role as a Stalinist agent might suggest. He is furious that Marussia has, as he tells her, "obliterated me from your memory." There he articulates one of the film's important themes: forgetting is dangerous, for the past will always haunt the present, sometimes in violent forms.
If at times it seems that Mr. Mikhalkov has used his imagery too bluntly, by the film's end he has put every bit of symbolism to effective use. A man who is lost and drives his truck in circles all day turns out to have a practical function in the plot. And the giant banner showing Stalin's face that rises over the fields at the end may seem too obvious. But that image suggests the way icons assume and change meaning, just as Kotov's view of Stalin changes from hero to villain in the course of one day.
Burnt by the Sun, the winner of 1995's Best Foreign Film Oscar, attempts, with only limited success, to combine two segments of radically different pacing and temperament. The movie's resolution represents forty-five minutes of taut, arresting drama. The setup, which weighs in at an overlong ninety minutes, has a tendency to meander. The overall effect is to limit the impact of the picture, primarily because half the audience may be asleep by the time the climax arrives.
The film takes place in 1936 Russia, nineteen years after the Communist Revolution and well into Stalin's reign of terror. We are introduced to Colonel Serguei Kotov (Nikita Mikhalkov), hero of the Revolution, and his family: young wife Maroussia (Ingeborga Dapkounaite) and six-year old daughter Nadia (Nadia Mikhalkov). They are spending a happy, peaceful summer at a rural retreat. Into this idyllic setting comes Dimitri (Oleg Menchikov), an old lover of Moroussia's who was once in exile and whose current occupation is unknown. His appearance irrevocably alters the loving relationship between Kotov and his wife as secrets, both new and old, come to light, and buried jealousy bubbles to the surface.
Director Nikita Mikhalkov is up front about the ultimate meaning of his film, dedicating it to "everyone who was burnt by the sun of the Revolution." This movie is very much an attack on the policies and paranoia of Stalin. The chilling final scenes emphasize the theme as we come to realize just how far-reaching the dictator's grasp was, and how insecure even the most loyal patriots were.
Burnt by the Sun's most apparent flaw is the stagnancy of its first two-thirds, which are scripted like Checkov in slow-motion, but without depth. Other than establishing relationships and hinting at past misdeeds, this portion of the film serves little purpose beyond presenting impressive views of Russian country vistas and highlighting several fine performances. Directors like the legendary Ingmar Bergman embraced this sort of deliberate, unhurried pace, but Bergman's films always had multiple levels of meaning. Mikhalkov's pastoral sequences are distressingly shallow -- they give us the characters and their relationships, but little more. Only in the final third does the plot begin to explore issues of substance and power.
Symbolism plays a key part in Burnt by the Sun. Some of it, like a huge, billowing portrait of Stalin, is obvious, but much is obscure. It's left up to the individual viewer to determine how literally to take several instances of magic realism -- not that a particular interpretation will more than subtly change anyone's appreciation of the film. Mikhalkov makes sure that his principal thesis is conveyed in such a manner that it's impossible to overlook or misunderstand.
Burnt by the Sun is characterized by solid acting (including a performance by director Mikhalkov as Kotov), but the real standout is the film maker's daughter Nadia, who displays a wonderfully wide-eyed energy and unexpected aptitude for dialogue. At the tender age of six, the young actress gives an amazingly unforced portrayal.
This is the first anti-Stalin film to come out of post-Communist Russia, and the new freedom shows in the full scope of what Mikhalkov is able to criticize. This story is the latest to illustrate the age-old injustices inherent in absolute power and how easily past loyalties are betrayed. After the protracted and sluggish setup, the meat of Burnt by the Sun is as gripping as that of any "serious" motion picture -- it's getting to that point that's the main difficulty.